After a long night of sleep, we’re ready to attack our first day. The plan for today is to visit the Volcanoes national park. It’s 45 minutes away from Hilo to the south, on the slopes of Mauna Loa. As the road climbs, we can see the vegetation changing little by little. We arrive at the visitor center and get on with the first task… finding hats and sunglasses. It’s hard to believe but we forgot to pack these 2 items! We find them in the souvenir shop and surprisingly it’s cheap. We stop by the “museum” to have a quick look, grab a map of the area and start our hiking with Ha’akulamanu (sulfur banks trail). The trail starts with an ominous warning saying that the air can be toxic to people with breathing problems and kids. It seems some parents are not that concern because we'll come across a bunch of kids, some of them quite young...
The trail starts by a path in the forest and very soon we smell rotten eggs. We emerge into the clearing where most of the vents are. We're walking on a stilt walkway across the plain since the ground is treacherous and it'd not be fun to break through the earth and have a leg stuck in one of these super hot vents. The sulfur clearly affects the vegetation; some of the plants have strange colors, as in the old sci-fi movies of the 70s and 80s. A little bit further away the earth is cracked open with fumes all over the crevasse, very “mephistophelian” . It's a very short hike and we reach the 'Iliahi trail soon after and then the Halema'uma'u trail that will takes us down to the caldera floor.
The path zigzags in the forest, bringing us every now and then close the the edge to get a good look at the caldera. We reach the bottom a little less than an hour later. We'd have loved to hike across the caldera but it's off limits, the air is unsafe because of volcanic activity. The view from the bottom is nevertheless made very impressive by the sheer size of the caldera. And we can see the huge amount of toxic gas vented by the Halema'uma'u crater 3km away on the other side of the caldera, not a welcoming sight. We walk a bit on the caldera floor to catch the next trail that will lead us around Waldron ledge and back to the visitor center on the crater rim trail. It's once again a trail going through lush vegetation. It's crazy how fast nature grows things in a environment that was not so long ago hell on earth. Even on the caldera floor, every crack is used by daring plants to reclaim the area.
We make it back to the visitor center using uncharted trails going through a housing section. Upon leaving that section we'll see the sign stating it is off limits to tourists ;) We grab a sandwich and take the car to check out the Kilauea overlook. From there we can have a much better (and closer) look at the fuming crater. It's packed with tourists fighting to get a picture of the crater. There's also another little museum with interesting info on.. volcanism! We find a quiet spot to eat and a few minutes later a group led by a park ranger arrives and we are blessed with an interesting presentation while eating. We have a look at the crater and it's clearly the best spot to see it but it's not worth more than a few minutes. We get back in the car and head to the Kilauea Iki crater. We stop 2 minutes on the way to check out the steam vents. The Kilauea Iki crater is East of the main caldera and it's not off limits. On top of that, there's a hike crossing the caldera and coming back by the crater rim. We have just enough time to do it without being caught by the night and we happen to have the little guide so we'll get all the explanation along the trail. It's a very popular trail but hopefully it's big enough that it does not feel too crowded. Once again we zigzag through lush vegetation down to the caldera floor. In the forest, we pass by 2 strange birds with red masks too busy eating on the side of the trail to pay us attention. The crater is 3 km long but it's flat so it would be fast if we were not stopping all the time to look at everything and take pictures. But we can't help it, it's a very strange environment and it's the first time we experience it. It's fascinating to see whole sections collapsed, some little mounds fuming, proving that it's not finished cooling down deep down even though the eruption happened in 1959! Towards the West side, there's a structure of rocks with a huge crevasse leaking fumes on top; a mandatory stop! The sunset is slowly starting but we're already climbing out of the crater. The common way to do the hike is to start by the rim and finish by the caldera but we did it the other way around. The advantage is that now we're mostly alone in the forest since it's late. The sun is setting over the main caldera, the birds are singing, … overall a nice hike back to the car.
It's getting dark when we get back to the car but we have one last thing to see before heading back home. Right next to the parking, there's a lava tube. I got to hike in lava tubes in Iceland years ago and it was better than this. This one is much bigger but we can only hike a very small portion of it. Back home, we'll struggle to find a restaurant open at 8:30pm... Things close early here, lesson learned for the rest of our trip :D